The power of silence
Long time ago there was a young man. Mike was as talkative as it can get. Actually, he had no particular subject to talk about. But that didn’t prevent him to speak about virtually everything. Mike thrived on huge arguments. One spring, Mike was walking forever, through the wood, and one day he met an old man. And the old man was silent. He was sitting under a tree, and he was silent. So ancient, silent, looking at nothing but within. Mike was curious. ‘Excuse me, sir,’ he stopped to ask, ‘why do you always sleepwalk through existence? Why aren’t you speaking anything?’ The old man turned around, and smiled: ‘I’m silent because in this world we get nothing for our word. I speak, I say you, I do, I mean it not. And when I snap shut the mouth, when I give my ears a rest and listen to how the world blinks, thinks, sings and breathes, just then nature starts speaking so much sense. Come, sit down, I have refused conversation for a while.’ Mike was really impressed, watched the old man in complete silence, amazement. The young man was inspired. He decided to follow this old man’s example. Mike started to be silent too. First he had terrible headaches. The young man tried really hard not to speak. He wanted to crack this stone, reminding how he felt the need to speak. So he’d say: ‘I would say something, but I won’t today.’
However, somewhere along the way, Mike also came to understand the value of not talking. He learned that silence, like speech, is communication. Silence can help to connect with others, and it can help to connect with ourselves. One day, as Mike was walking in the woods, he came across a group of people arguing. He stopped and listened. The people’s speech soon convinced Mike that they were arguing about something that mattered to them. Mike wanted to say something in response. But he recognized that whatever he had said would have been more fuel on the argumentative fire. Mike stayed silent and just stood there. In silence, people feel they have a bit of room to think about what they want to say Somehow, as a result of his silence, Mike had gained more insight into the issue about which they were arguing. He now felt a little less certain that there was an obvious solution, and he could see that the situation was more complicated than it had at first appeared. He had also recognised that the people sharing their loud view had a different mindset.
Mike himself, for a long time.The two calmed down and began to see each other’s point of view. They reached some kind of solution of how to be and stop arguing. Mike felt grateful that the two had calmed down. He was even happier that he had calmed down too. He thought that the quieting was what helped mitigate this fight, and that his silence had taught him something.
‘Silence is a great teacher,’ he told me. Here are some of the simple things that silence teaches: 1. ‘He who sacrifices his liver to read does not listen to the sounds of his sheep.’ 2. Nature speaks to us in three ways: events, which we hear about; the account, which is what we say happened; and the echo, which is what the event itself has to say.
Silence can support you in paying attention and thinking better things. Silence can support you in calming down, relaxing, breathing slower, lowering your blood pressure and reducing stress. Silence can support you in learning. For example, silence can be a way to connect to others. Silence can be your ally in learning how other people feel and think, in ways that other people think. It can be supportive in building rapport, having good relations and finding common psychological ground. It might nourish your creativity and support the emergence of good ideas. And silence can support you in having a felt sense of being present, in being here now.
But, in sum, if you want a better quality of life, cultivate spaces of silence. It might take work to find, it might take sitting in your chair with eyes shut, but the rewards are great.